EarthAlmanac
California Puts a Charge
Into Electric Carmakers
Start your engines--cleanly and
quietly, please.
The race is on to get the elec
tric car off the drawing board and
onto the street. California has fired
the starting gun with tough new air
quality standards. By 1998, 2 per
cent of all new vehicles sold in the
state-about 40,000-must emit
zero pollutants, a mandate that only
electric vehicles (EVs) can fulfill; in
2003 the minimum rises to 10 per
cent. "The idea is to jump-start the
electric-vehicle industry in Califor
nia," says John Schumann of the
Los Angeles Department of Water
and Power (LADWP). Twelve oth
er states and the District of Colum
bia are considering similar laws.
Breakthroughs include improved
batteries and recharge time. Last
August, Nissan unveiled a prototype
(above) with a new nickel-cadmium
battery. The company says it can be
fully recharged in only 15 minutes,
providing a range of about 100 miles
at 45 miles an hour. General
Motors, however, like most carmak
ers, uses lead-acid batteries for its
EV, which require two to eight
hours to recharge. But GM is much
closer to production than Nissan.
Closest of all is a Swedish-based
enterprise, Clean Air Transport,
whose model is scheduled to roll in
early 1993. The company has signed
a contract with LADWP to bring
10,000 EVs into southern California
by 1995. This EV, a hybrid, has
both an electric motor for short
distance commuting and a conven
tional four-cylinder engine for
longer trips.
Nosy Detective to Monitor
River Thames Pollution
nearly blind African fish called
the elephantnose mormyrid
lives in murky water and
navigates as if it had radar. Its keen
sensory powers are being enlisted to
detect pollution in England's River
Thames. To aid feeding, the fish's
mouth is located at the end of a long
snout, but the mormyrid's real ad
vantage is in an electric organ
in its tail.
This creates an electrical
field that lets the fish sense
any change in the water
including pollutants-that
causes its electrical output to
Svary. John Lewis, a University
of London biologist, plans to
submerge tanks of mormyrids to
test the city's water supply by moni
toring these watchdogs with fins.
Mammoth Lode of Ivory
From the Pleistocene
n Siberia the Russians are mining
millions of woolly mammoths
preserved in glacial ice between
10,000 and 40,000 years ago. The
extinct behemoths live on-in orna
ments carved from their tusks (be
low). Despite the recent ivory-trade
ban, this source is still legal and not
on any endangered species list.
Siberia's freezer may hold more
than 600,000 tons of ivory, accord
ing to Ed Espinoza of the National
Fish and Wildlife Forensic Labora
tory. While a brownish grade brings
about $150 a pound, the top grade,
comparable to elephant tusk,
fetches $400.
Many carvings analyzed at U. S.
ports last year were legal mammoth
ivory-good news for elephants.
But now there is bad news for other
species. "Ivory from hippopotamus
teeth and warthog tusks is showing
up," says Espinoza.
National Geographic,January1992
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